'WTF'? Terror front CAIR changes name – again

Officially, the Council on American-Islamic Relations no longer exists.

The organization that’s so closely connected to the Hamas terror network that the FBI won’t let its agents use it as a liaison to the Muslim community, and yet so politically valuable to the Democrat Party that the Obama administration won’t prosecute it for terrorist activities, is now known as the Washington Trust Foundation – or “WTF” for short.

The timing of the name change, quietly filed three months ago with the District of Columbia, is suspicious.

CAIR hasn’t filed a complete tax return with the IRS in five years. But it has filed numerous requests for reincorporation with the District of Columbia.

The different iterations of the embattled organization are dizzying. Here’s a quick history:

1994: CAIR incorporates as 501(c)(4) nonprofit.

2005: CAIR operates as CAIR Foundation Inc.

2007: CAIR applies for new 501(c)(3) status under CAIR Foundation.

2009: CAIR formally renames itself CAIR-Action Network Inc.

2011: CAIR also operates as for-profit “CAIR Inc.”

June 2013: CAIR reincorporates as Washington Trust Foundation.

Congressional investigators worry CAIR is creating shell entities to hide foreign donations in violation of federal law. Since 2008, when the FBI publicly cut off ties to CAIR, the group has struggled to raise money inside the United States and has stepped up its overseas fundraising, mainly in the Middle East.

That same year, 2008, CAIR also created an entity known as the Muslim Peace Foundation.

One of the foundation’s principals is listed as Winslow Seale, a black Muslim convert who later changed his name to Johari Abdul Malik. Malik was a close friend of the late al-Qaida cleric Anwar Awlaki, who ministered to some of the 9/11 hijackers at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center outside Washington before fleeing the country and helping lead al-Qaida’s operations in Yemen. Malik still works at the mosque.

A 2009 letter uncovered by the Investigative Project on Terrorism reveals CAIR Director Nihad Awad solicited then-Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi for his financial support in launching the Muslim Peace Foundation. Awad also sought donations from Sudanese President Omar Bashir.

“I am concerned that Awad and CAIR may be soliciting – and receiving – funds from other unsavory foreign governments and organizations, including some that may be sponsors of terror,” wrote Republican Rep. Frank Wolf, who heads a House judiciary subcommittee, in a letter to the IRS commissioner.

Former FBI agent John Guandolo says CAIR is really “Hamas in the United States, doing business as the Council on American-Islamic Relations.”

He added that the group is “operating under a fictitious name and portraying itself as ‘America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization’ to hide its seditious agenda as a Hamas entity.”

In 2007, the Justice Department identified CAIR as a member of the “U.S. Palestine Committee,” which Guandolo says is simply “Hamas in the United States.”

Washington-based CAIR and one of its co-founders, Omar Ahmad, remain on the government’s unindicted terrorist co-conspirators list.

American Freedom Law Center, a public-interest law firm advised by former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy, says: “CAIR has been running a global criminal money laundering operation out of the nation’s capitol.”

CAIR refused comment for this article.

AFLC says CAIR first started the “scheme” in 2005, which at the time was an IRS-approved 501(c)(4) lobbying organization.

“CAIR’s problem was that as a registered lobbying group it had to report to the IRS the source of funds received over $5,000,” the group said in a recent report. “The specific problem was that CAIR was receiving millions of dollars from oil-rich Gulf Arabs, the same sources that were also financing the Muslim Brotherhood to prepare for the ‘Arab Spring’ and even al-Qaida operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

CAIR’s expensive headquarters just three blocks from Congress were financed with millions of dollars from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, according to the bestselling book, “Muslim Mafia.”

“To avoid reporting these millions of dollars from the dubious Islamist sources and to avoid registering as an agent for foreign sovereigns as required by federal law, CAIR created a separate company called CAIR-Foundation Inc., to serve as an IRS-approved 501(c)(3) charitable organization,” the report said.

CAIR itself stopped filing any federal tax returns from 2008-2010 and allowed the IRS to withdraw its status as a 501(c)(4), converting itself to a regular for-profit corporation called “CAIR Inc,” a “C” corporation.

CAIR also ceased all of its operations and became simply a holding company, transferring, at least on accounting books, all of its employees and equipment to CAIR Foundation.

“The result is that CAIR (Inc.), the for-profit, now receives millions of dollars from foreign Islamist sources every year, acting in effect as a foreign agent for these foreign governments, but only has to report the amounts of its income and not its sources,” the report says.

“CAIR then transfers these monies to CAIR Foundation (or Washington Trust Foundation) as ‘loans’ or grants, and CAIR Foundation (or Washington Trust Foundation) then only has to report its source as ‘CAIR,'” and not the actual Mideast source, it adds. “The result is a criminal money laundering operation that allows CAIR to funnel millions of dollars from dubious foreign sources into a lobbying group fronting as a charity without the legally required disclosure of sources.”

WND has obtained CAIR Foundation Inc.’s latest IRS filing. It is a partial return for the calendar year 2011, covering only the period from Aug. 9, 2011, to Dec. 31, 2011. The final page of the return, in fact, requests an extension from the IRS.

“Additional time is required to obtain information necessary in filing a complete and accurate return,” states CAIR’s accountant Joey Musmar.

The filing states the organization solicited $3,964,990 in gifts, grants and other contributions that “were not tax deductible.” An annual fundraiser raised a net $106,879.

At the beginning of 2011, CAIR’s liabilities exceeded its assets by $940,279.

It also owed “CAIR Inc.” a total of $722,261 for “charity consulting.” This amount is listed as a “loan.” CAIR Inc. is listed as a “C Corp.”

CAIR insists its undisclosed IRS Form 990 tax returns for 2008-2010 exist. Yet it still won’t produce them, despite repeated requests from WND, as well as Politico, USA Today and other national media. According to the IRS, nonprofits must make their tax returns available to the public upon request.

CAIR Foundation, which operates out of a Washington address of 453 New Jersey Ave., lists Todd Gallinger, director of chapter development, as its contact for such matters. Public requests for the missing Form 990s can be directed to him at (202) 488-8787 or [email protected].

During the years CAIR failed to disclose its donors to the government, it solicited funds from Libya, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, UAE and other terror-sponsoring foreign governments, according to “Muslim Mafia.” CAIR is not registered as a foreign agent.
Yet according to the Center for Security Policy, CAIR has since its founding in 1994:

Received at least $2,792,203 in contributions, income and money from foreign principals in the form of 11 distinct transactions;

Received a $2,106,251 mortgage loan from a foreign principal for its Washington headquarters;

Secured the promise of at least $54,500,000 in pledges from foreign principals;

Met and coordinated with foreign principals on at least 35 occasions;

Engaged in more than 100 political influence operations on behalf of foreign principals in the United States, including the head of the Saudi-based Organization of Islamic Conference, a 56-nation bloc of Muslim states that is aggressively lobbying the U.N. and U.S. to implement blasphemy laws criminalizing free speech critical of Islam.

This foreign activity and influence is all the more troubling given the fact that the FBI has established that CAIR is controlled by the Egyptian-based, Saudi-funded Muslim Brotherhood, which created a network of U.S. front groups like CAIR to not only support Hamas, its Palestinian branch, and raise money for terrorists inside America’s Muslim community, but to ultimately overthrow America and establish Islamic law here.

“They’re having great success of implementing Shariah law,” former FBI agent Guandolo warned. “I could give you a thousand examples.”

“CAIR’s criminal financial operations raise a whole host of questions that the IRS and the Department of Justice should be investigating,” said Robert Muise, AFLC co-founder and senior counsel.

“The obvious question to be asked now is whether the IRS can get past its politically motivated witch hunt of the tea party and pro-Israel groups and whether the Department of Justice will finally prosecute CAIR and its founders for their direct and indirect involvement in the material support of terrorism,” Muise added.